When the sky tears
by LawGrad07
Summary: The year is 1776. The war for America rages and reinforcements have been sent into the breach. With them are nurses, who have uprooted from their safe lives to see to the casualties of war. For some though, more is sown during the conflict's course than horror. Bonds of friendship and sisterhood are forged and tested, and love is found by two who were most assuredly not seeking it.
1. Chapter 1

A note from the author: Please forgive the re-post of this work. The original was deleted quite by accident a while back and I've only just got around to re-posting it. This story is set in the world of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, but that, dear readers, is where the similarities end. It begins in the year 1776, three years before the notorious Hessian Horseman is set, in Burton's world, to lose his head. He, the Hessian, has always intrigued me as a character, and I wrote this piece, as well as to exercise my fiction writing muscles, in an effort to better know him and the world he inhabits. As the story-tags suggest, there will be a chance of something akin to romance in this tale, but later. Much later. This world is rich, and I feel the Horseman could well be a deeply complex creature. I refuse to do it, or him, the disservice of making this story anything other than representative of these facts.

A final little point, later in the story there will be many and varied characters for whom German is their mother tongue. It is not mine however, so while I shall do my damnedest to make sure my writing is accurate, if you spot a mistake don't hesitate to correct me.

All good wishes,

_L.G._

* * *

**_The Nurses_**

The year was 1776. The month, June.

Through a thick and encompassing mist, four Frigates flying English flags broke away from the great armada making for New York harbour under Admiral Richard Howe and pitched south and west towards the New Jersey coast. Within each of their holds, two hundred of the King's finest soldiers waited impatiently for landfall; their weapons stowed in favour of cards, small coins and a nightly ale ration for the duration of their trip. Lord knows, it had been a long one.

Aboard the Valliant, the third ship in the flotilla, a small group of nurses travelled along with the soldiers. There were twelve of them in all, and they had been tasked with setting up and assisting in the running of triage stations at a number of the larger allied camps within besieged America. Their destinations were many and varied, for there were numerous encampments in need of their services, and each woman, for all her bravery in volunteering for this task, hoped not to be positioned too close to the frontline.

Sleeping two to a cabin and thoroughly segregated from the gentlemen-soldiers in their portion of the hold, the travelling ladies spent the later hours of the day speaking to each other in hushed voices, wondering about the new and foreign land they were venturing to and what they would find once they got there.

The pair who had grown closest over the voyage were Sally and Rose. Sally, a doctor's daughter, had been obliged by her father when she was young and impressionable, and was allowed, under his tutelage, to study his books on anatomy and medicine. Though she was denied, because of her sex, the chance to study formally and practice for a living wage, the experience she gained in her father's surgery served as her practical schooling, and she was happy to volunteer herself as an unpaid nurse to serve King and country when the need arose.

Rose, by contrast, learned her trade from an aunt who practiced midwifery. True, she had told the enlistment officer on the dock, there is no call for midwives on the frontline, but God above if she hadn't witnessed and stitched some of the most awful tears in human flesh imaginable. That alone, she concluded, qualified her for the perils of field medicine in times of war, and the officer who stamped her papers as she bustled past him to board the fat and lofty galleon moored and waiting on the Thames didn't utter a word in opposition. In fact he had looked vaguely ill.

Between these two friends now, a single candle is held. It illuminates their faces, hands, and the pearl buttons on the front of their respective dresses, but little else of the room is spared the otherwise encompassing dim. They pay it no heed. Conjecture is in the midst of being spoken.

"I'm honestly serious Rose" Sally pressed, smiling at how suddenly aghast her companion looked. "The quartermaster told me so himself just today. Germans! HUNDREDS of them!"

"I don't understand.." Rose replied, leaning to ferret through the small file of documents that she and her fellow nurses had been presented with as they boarded. She pulled a slightly crinkled map of America's east coast from within the soft leather covering slip, her entire expression pinching with the depth of her frown as she regarded it. "I thought we were winning the war.." As she spoke she traced what the map's key identified as the allied line with the tip of her finger, noting it's seemingly favourable position, "Why would Germany need to send aid if we're winning?"

"I've no idea.." Sally said, her chin resting in the palm of her right hand as she squinted through the candlelight. "It could be that we've been misled about England's chances of victory. Or perhaps the fact that our King is a certain German Landgrave's kith and kin makes not sending aid..undiplomatic." She snuffled softly, the candle's flame wavering at her exhalation. "Who knows."

A contemplative silence fell for a moment as the ladies regarded the map between them. As luck would have it, they were to be stationed at the same outpost. According to the officer who had given them their papers, it was large and fortified, and sat between a farmhold and the ocean in the vast openness of New Jersey. With a permanent garrison of roughly one hundred and eighty men, their little triage looked to be a busy one.

A thought occurred to Rose then, and she spoke up through a coyly growing smile, sitting the map back in its pouch. "Do you think we'll have to treat them as well?" she asked, an almost coquettish gleam in her eye, "The Germans I mean."

"Most likely. I..What's this?" Sally leant a little closer to Rose in the dim, an edge of faux-scandal finding her tone at the whimsical expression on her friend's face. "Rose Clarke, was it your plan all along to capture yourself a strapping sol-"

"What? No!" Rose yelped, blushing to the roots of her hair and laughing out the words, "Don't even imply it!"

"That 'no' was no denial!" her counterpart merrily pointed out, setting the candle down on the small table between their respective cots before she dropped it in her mirth. She watched as the mortally embarrassed woman fell onto her side on her cot, her head thrown back as she giggled with rapturous cheek.

"That was _unfair_ Sally!" she accused light-heartedly, "I can't even speak the language well enough to say 'hello' without offending someone, let alone manage to..to.." A brief hush came over Rose then, caught by the sudden look of shock on her friend's face. "What ever is the matter?"

"Neither can I.." Sally replied, pressing a balled fist to her midriff. The stay she wore exacerbated her propensity to hyperventilate when stressed, and the realisation she had just come to certainly wrought that very thing within her.

"Neither can you what, dear?"

"Speak the language. If we do have to treat the German forces, how in the World will we communicate with them? I don't speak a word of.." She took a couple of shallow breaths, trying to settle herself before finishing her thought with a groaned "..Oh dear God..We're half an ocean away from home and I suddenly want to be anywhere but here!"

"I..surely they wouldn't..Oh darn it..!" Rose's litany came as she struggled to push herself upright without terminally creasing the material of her dress. Though she was, for her age and station, a generally practical thing, she had, today of all days, decided to wear her favourite silks. It was a fool's earned really, within the walls of this great hulk where no one but she could appreciate their muted fineness, but without making mistakes one cannot learn. Her plight brought a tiny flicker of jollity forth from within Sally's sea of mortification, and the less practically-challenged woman leant her upended friend her arm to hold as she righted herself.

A flurry of movement later and they were once again facing each other across the milky light of their shared candle.

"What I meant to say" Rose huffed as she smoothed her dress back into good order, "was do you really think Mr Barmouth would have us treating men who aren't strictly part of the English army?"

The man she referred to, Henry Barmouth, was one of the chief investors in medical supplies in England. It was from his pocket that the funding for the triages that she, Sally and their ten counterparts were to work in came. He was shrewd and opportunistic, and this war was making him a fortune.

"It'd make him a lot more money if he did.." Sally replied, trying to reason her way out of the unhappy conclusion they seemed to have reached on conjecture alone, "but surely we would have been told.."

"Why yes, of course!" Rose agreed, hoping that enthusiasm would somehow quiet the doubt which now plagued both she and her friend. "The officer who passed out our notes would have warned us.."

Somewhere in that sentence a cue was given that set both women instantly on edge. It was something non-verbal; the tone of Rose's voice as she spoke, less the words she actually said, and the frown that Sally responded to it with. Over exuberance met with apprehension. A tense beat of silence passed before either woman dared speak.

"Have you read everything in there?" Sally finally asked, pointing to the open document folder on their shared night table.

"No, I thought you.."

"No"

Rose's face fell. "Oh!..Oh _ZOUNDS_..!" she groaned, dropping her face into her hands as Sally leapt for the folder.

"We must be two thirds through our voyage by now!" the near frantic woman said as she separated the leather cover from its contents and spilled them across the length of her cot.

"HOW could I have not had the forethought to READ this!"

"We've had other things on our minds" Rose spoke in limp defence of their mutual distraction from the literature as she shimmied over to the edge of Sally's cot and settled. What with all the soldiers and gossip, card games and the glorious _GLORIOUS_ walks around the massive rectangular deck, time had simply passed on by without them noticing. She reached for a document while her counterpart rummaged at random, urgency lending her hands great speed.

The next few minutes passed in relative silence, but for sporadic mutterings or the occasional hitched breath from Sally and the raspy shuffle of thin and wispy papers being sorted through and scanned for details pertaining to the need for volunteer nurses to be versed in a tongue outside of their native English. Three small piles of paper were made upon the cot, documents being placed in each depending on their subject matter.

The first pile was for any documents that detailed their living arrangements and duties while they worked in the triage. This one was by far the largest of the three, and included a small booklet which explained what essentials each nurse would be provided with and what would be expected of them once they reached their destination. Reading through the first few pages lost the women a full quarter hour, and both were pleased to learn that, among other things, there would be facilities to boil water. Neither could imagine a worse fate than working unending shifts without the ability, when finally they had a moment to spare, to have a hot bath.

With their main concerns about their lodgings allayed and their minds settled on the fact that the rest of the little manual contained their duties, exhaustively detailed, it was set back in the pile to be finished later. For now, the sorting went on.

The second pile was for official-looking papers which, upon inspection, were found to require the signatures of both Mr Barmouth and a Doctor Robin Hall, of whom neither woman had heard, when they arrived at their destination. According to one particularly officious scrap of paper in this pile, Doctor Hall was the head physician at the camp they were to work at, and would be the man to whom they were accountable during their time there.

The last pile was for anything that didn't fit in the first two. In here went a couple of small receipts that Rose had tucked into the folder after buying a treat or two for herself from the quartermaster; one laundry note for a hat that was now, thanks to a marksman of a seagull, entirely ruined; a single papery sweet wrapper, which was all that remained of one of the treats Rose had bought, and, finally, a neatly folded piece of paper which both women overlooked when first they designated it a pile. It was small, yellow, and blank on the outside. When the cot was clear of clutter however, and they re-checked each pile for safety's sake, the paper stood out like the awful chalky blotches patterning Rose's once pristine hat.

"What are the odds" Sally asked, picking up the object of their consternation, "that this will be a mandatory order to all crewmen and women to learn Ger-" she was hushed by Rose's hands covering her lips, and managed a soft chortle through them while their owner glared at her.

"The more often you say things like that, the more likely they'll be to come _true_!" she scolded playfully, though her expression lost none of its harried character. "May I read it please?"

Sally passed the slip over with a slight nod before retrieving her own file from where she had tucked it beneath her single, threadbare pillow on the evening she arrived onboard. She had done this, not because she had wanted to ignore the folder's contents, but for practical reasons. A single pillow was simply horrific on the neck, and she was unwilling to use any of the few spare clothes she had with her as extra padding.

"..'Dear Volunteer'.." Rose began, trailing off to read in silence while Sally flicked through her file. She too found a small, yellowish, neatly folded piece of paper which, as Rose's had, turned out to be a hand written letter. She opened it out and read from where Rose left off.

"..'Welcome to the war effort. You will be stationed between a farmhold and a markedly wet place'..Who wrote this?" she snuffled, checking the signature quickly. "Doctor Hall.."

"Oh I like him already!" Rose opined cheerfully.

"..'though I can give no names'.." Sally continued, "..'and say no more on your eventual location for reasons of security. You will be one of the two nurses assigned to the triage here'..Well, I already know the second.."

"That you rightly do."

"..'and will be tasked with seeing to the good health of over two hundred men, English..and German alike'.."

At this revelation the friends shared a pained glance, their perception of their situation shifting to accommodate the new information. It seemed that their conclusions about Mr Barmouth's desire to expand his fortunes had been accurate. That, or this Dr Hall fellow was a terribly altruistic sort.

As the next line was approached, Sally's voice became a little choppy as her breaths once again began to shorten. By its end she wasn't breathing at all. "..'Be advised. The good men of Hesse-Kassel are...r...rare speakers of English, so an aptitude in conversational German would be very much appreciated, and...would put...everyone at their ease'.." A brief pause was had, the beleaguered woman's jaw working silently for a moment before words burst forth.

"God in Heaven, I am the _Devil_ for bad luck!" she exclaimed, thrusting the letter away as if it had burned her. After a panic-thinned breath she dropped her face into both hands, leaning forward enough that she could rest her elbows on her knees as her anxiousness peaked.

Rose, for her part, was honestly more flustered by her friend's use of the word 'Devil' than by the thought of not sharing a common language with her prospective patients. One can work around the lack of a language and learn as one goes along. Making oneself right with God however is a lifetime pursuit, and talk of Satan is not the way to endear oneself to the Almighty.

Though she was quite rambunctious by nature, Rose had intimations of being God-fearing about her, and she liked to think that He had approved of her helping to bring new lives into His world while she had worked with her aunt back in London's east end. Quite how her new occupation would square with Him she wasn't sure, but saving lives was certainly preferable to ending them.

Tempered by her faith as she was however, she was by no means above using coarseness to break a dour mood. Thus, as she reached and gave poor aggrieved Sally a comforting pat on the back, she deadpanned, "You know, for all this Dr Hall writes in the manner of a polite and cultured gentleman, I have the sudden urge to drown him."

The outrageousness of her words snapped Sally's head up, and she sputtered out an almost mirthful titter while staring at her counterpart, her expression a mixture of shock and panic. After swallowing back a swell of trepidation and bile, she asked "Is there anything in there about how we might _acquire_ this 'aptitude in conversational German'?"

"Let me look."

As Rose went back to fishing through her letter, Sally forced herself to breathe deeply in an effort to quell the gasping attack she could feel coming on. This was a more arduous task than it might seem to be, for she was now feeling more like a fish out of water than she yet had in her life. For every one of her twenty-eight years she'd had herself convinced that the piecemeal Latin she used for reading parts of her father's medical texts would be the only foreign language she would need to get by in the life of a medic.

More the fool she, it seemed.

What made the unexpected need to widen her repertoire so worrying was not shame on her part for needing assistance in coming to grips with a new language. Learning had been part of her life for many years, and she was at her happiest when she was presented with something new to tackle. No, the troubling thing was that, even with days upon days crammed with practice, she would not be fluent enough by the time they reached their destination to be properly and comfortably able to interact with and care for her patients. Not only did she feel like she was suddenly useless to this cause she had volunteered to be a part of, but she also felt silenced, incapable of communicating her thoughts coherently to those who may come to rely on her. And to compound this, there was no way she could escape. The time were returning to England was an option had passed long ago. The walls felt suddenly close and her breaths, doubly laboured.

Horror-stricken, she imagined the scenario - being approached by a foreign solider who asks for aid while she stares dumbly mute back at him, pained embarrassment overcoming them both; hers for herself, and his, for her also. Sally shuddered at the thought, and was just about to curl herself into as tight a ball as possible when a sudden and gleeful "Ah _ha_!" from Rose brought her mind back from its wonderings.

"You found something?" she wheezed hopefully, leaning to try and see whatever the passage that had piqued her friend's interest was about. Rose held the letter between them, reading out what she'd found.

"..'Being that proficiency in foreign tongues is something of a cultured privilege in modern England, I have included in the back of the housing booklet a small guide to the most commonly used and necessary words and phrases likely to be encountered while working alongside the German forces'..Well isn't he a helpful fellow.."

"Very.." Sally grumbled, opening the housing and duties booklet they had looked at moments before to find the neatly printed notes promised by the letter on the back seven and three-quarter pages. On the bottom of the last page was a cheerfully inscribed note,

'Ich hoffe, das hilft! That is the German for, 'I hope this helps!'

Both women did their level best to sound out the foreign phrase, but without half a clue as to what syllables the letters conspired to create, they were left more off put than when they began. Even easygoing Rose appeared more ill at ease than she had a moment previous.

A tense few seconds of eye contact was held before Sally snapped the book closed, hiding the doctor's presently unwelcome positivity. "So" she brooked, giving her equally downhearted friend a forced smile, "Drowning?"

Rose had the grace to look shocked at herself for snorting in amusement. "Doctor Hall? Yes. Myself?...Hmm, not quite yet. Give that here.." She reached over and slipped the book from between Sally's fingers, flipping it open to the first page of notes.

"It starts with the alphabet at least.." she said, moving further into the candlelight to better examine the letters. Off to her left, Sally huffed softly.

"I'll study it in a moment" she said as she stood, her steps echoing more noisily than her still uneven breathing in the sparse room as she walked to the corner in which they had piled their travelling cases. From within the smallest of hers, an old leather doctor's bag, she withdrew her journal and, having closed the bag with a soft click, returned to Rose's side to share the candlelight. She opened the journal at today's page and then counted forward to the projected end of their voyage.

"..Eighteen days.."

Rose looked up from her reading. "Sorry?"

"We look to reach the coast in eighteen days or so. God willing."

"Hm..Do you think we could.." the pages of notations were indicated with a glance, "get through this in that time?"

Sally gave a thready and doubtful chuff. "So short a time to learn a language?"

"No" Rose corrected sagely, "We need only become proficient enough to be able to learn more once we arrive."

Though Sally at first looked dubious, she couldn't forget the helpless feeling of non-comprehension that she feared would overtake her at some crucial moment in the near future - confronted by a soldier who needed her help but whose words she could not understand. In the face of THAT horror, even a little German was better than absolutely none.

"What shall we learn to say first?" she asked, looking at the page Rose had open. The alphabet ran across the top and looked, at least at first glance, to be more or less comprehensible.

"How about" Rose chuckled teasingly, "I cannot speak much German. Have mercy!"

The dour mood that had encroached upon the two friends, along with the lingering remnants Sally's breathing issue, were evaporated entirely by the explosion of laughter that followed this suggestion, and they spent the small hours scanning Dr Hall's guidance notes, trying to piece together that exact phrase as the coast, and their new lives, grew ever closer.


	2. Chapter 2

Another little note from the author: There is a conversation in this chapter between two Hessian soldiers. The translation can be found in the end-note. Thank you all for reading.

* * *

**_Arrival_**

It was a fresh, warm morning in early July 1776 when tall masts topped with English flags were spotted by a pair of watchmen stationed high in their lofty tower on the eastern seaboard. Gulls screamed, the ocean lapped the shore and the wind whipped an English Corporal's cap clean off his head as he scarpered down the rotten hair thin steps of the ladder and made for his horse. The ride from seafront to base camp needed to be made with haste. It looked like the reinforcements had arrived.

An entire day would pass before all four Frigates were free of their walking cargo. The process of unloading was deathly slow and care strewn; one ship at a time letting down its guard for long enough to jettison its longboats while its sister ships kept a constant watch to the north, east, and south. Once the boats hit the shore their occupants made haste up the beach, making for the watch tower from which they had first been spotted hours earlier. This was allied land, at least for the moment, and while that fact made it safe enough to land here, the soldiers who came to meet them and pointed the way towards their base did not, even in the dusk's low light, carry lanterns. Any unaccounted-for pinprick of light on the shore could alert passing American ships to their presence. This eventuality could _**not**_ be chanced.

When finally they made it ashore, Sally, Rose and the ten other nurses they had been travelling with were ferried up the beach amid one of the fifty or so groups of soldiers with whom they had disembarked an hour previous. They were soaked, cold, covered in sand and half petrified with nerves, but they had made it in one piece and for this they were grateful.

Urged on by the squadron that seemed to have adopted them, they made their way from the crest of the sandy hillock upon which the guard tower sat, down the opposite side and onto what looked to have once been a cart track. The ground was wet and muddy from a day's worth of passing soldiers, and more than a couple of slips were had as the darkness closed in and the night's chill made already clumsy feet numb.

Once their group and two others had made it safely from craggy hill to pockmarked track, they were greeted by a waiting soldier. Though he was covered from throat to ankles in a travelling cloak, the red collar and cuffs of his uniform were allowed to peek through when he squared his shoulders and stood in the centre of the track to address the congregation.

"I'll keep this necessarily brief. Your destination is two miles west of here. You will follow this track" he gestured crisply to the path behind him "until you are met by a cavalryman. He will act as your escort for the remainder of your journey. He will not be in uniform, so look for a brown horse with a braided tail. Follow on behind him at a distance of ten or so paces. This area is relatively peaceful, but we've been fooled before and are taking no chances."

As he spoke, the soldier's gaze swept across the people before him, seeking the eyes of some but not all of those he addressed. When he found the gaggle of nurses amid the uniforms of his fellows he stepped closer, the ranks parting like the sea to Moses to let him through.

"Ladies" he said by way of greeting, eyeing them critically and being eyed by some in return, "Thank you for your sacrifice in coming here. Leaving your homes behind could not have been easy. Forgive me if my words alarm you, but should poor luck strike and a battle join on your journey, I urge you to take leave of your group, scatter, and run for the coast. Leave the track swiftly. You will be harder to follow through the trees than you would be on open ground."

The dread his words brought was palpable, though if he noticed, he did not react. Instead he finished his address with a sombre nod and moved aside, extending his arm to indicate the path and waving the groups past him. "Look for the rider whose mount has a braided tail" he repeated as they began moving off, eyes front, along the muddied high-verged path. A muttered "God speed" was the last they heard from him, and as they moved further along the track, the silhouettes of lightly swaying trees arching up on either side of them, the silence that had fallen when the soldier had first approached was broken by whispered words from Sally to Rose.

"Scatter if battle is drawn, he says...Thank you for your sacrifice, he says...He sounds as if he expects us all to be slaughtered..."

"I know" Rose huffed, looking around furtively. They were surrounded on all sides by walls of men at least four deep, but despite this they felt their vulnerability keenly. "It does sound terrible, but don't worry."

Sally snorted softly. "How can I _not_?"

"I have a plan ready just in case we end up in over our heads."

"Oh?"

"This soldier here..." she said, gesturing to the gentleman on her immediate left with a gloved hand. He looked down at her, vaguely amused about being the subject of a _sotto voce_ conversation. Pleased at having his attention, Rose carried on.

"We'll grab him by the elbows and drag him back with us! He'll keep us safe, won't you sir?" she asked, looking up at him and projecting her best 'I'm small and feminine, protect me' air. Amused though tempered by his need to maintain discipline while on duty, the soldier gave her a little nod and mustered a gruff, "I'll endeavour to try ma'm."

Rose beamed at him, turning back to Sally to say, "You see? We'll be fine."

Her friend didn't seem particularly convinced, but she accepted the platitude regardless. "At least he has a gun" she said, clutching Rose's arm with both hands as they walked. Whether this was a protective move to keep from losing her in the crowd or one based on the need to avert another fall - Rose having been unlucky twice on the hill between watchtower and track - she wouldn't say. She did however rush to opine, "I'm relieved we're in this together, you and I" and was glad to feel Rose's answering squeeze of fingers to wrist as they picked their way along the track with nought but the direction the soldiers were going in and the risen moon to guide their path. The light cast by the latter illuminated esoteric things; the glint of a gold button on a uniform; the wetness on the pockmarked and unkempt cobbling on the track; the barrel of one of the soldier's rifles, carried neatly across his chest; and, when finally they came upon him, the spurs and tack of a cavalryman who sat proud in the saddle of a chocolate-brown stallion with a braided tail.

Though he was greeted warmly by the forward rank of their party, the rider remained silent as he gathered himself and spurred his horse, guiding it into a slow walk along the path ahead of them. It would be three quarters of an hour before they reached their destination, provided that no one dawdled and no trouble was run across on the way.

The allied encampment sat on the top of a steeply sloping hill, overlooking a half-mile of wheat fields which rolled with the topography down in a lazy curve towards the northeast. The buildings at its heart were once the property of a prominent family of settlers who, having sworn this portion of their land and any provisions they could spare to the war effort in exchange for peace and protection, now resided in their more than slightly stately farmhold a quarter mile up the road to the west.

The donated buildings had once been devoted to housing a number of paid hands, storing the wheat crop when it was harvested and raising the family's work horses. There were four in all. At the north edge of the camp, backing onto the endless wheat fields, was a stable with room enough to house seven horses at a stretch. A wide dirt and stone path lead from the entrance of the camp in the south to the stable in the north, and if one stood facing the stable the store room and one of two large bunkhouses would be found on one's left, and the second and larger bunkhouse and the outsized yard it backed on to would dominate one's view to the right.

Of all the buildings given over to the allies, the bunkhouses alone found an entirely new purpose when the soldiers came. The smaller one on the left side of camp, squat but long and 'L' shaped, became the triage, and the larger rectangular one off to the right became the barracks. The yard behind it had once been used to break horses for the saddle, though nowadays it was part tent-village - the overspill of soldiers from the barracks finding some semblance of home there - and part exercise yard. It was men now, not horses, that were broken in and trained for war here.

Lit up from within by countless lanterns and candles and protected from prying eyes by dense woodland to the north, south and east, the encampment looked, from a distance, to be the very embodiment of welcome and safety. Such was the impression received by those who had walked in the hoof prints of their cavalryman-guide as they finally, cold and weary, breached the western border and set off along a gently sloping path towards the secluded oily wash of orange light that was the camp.

They were joined briefly by a second cavalryman. He rode past them briskly on his way to speak to their guide, and in doing so dispelled the group's universal wonderment at his protracted silence. "Sind diese das Verstärkungen?" the newly arrived man asked, querying the nature of his counterpart's followers. He knew from word-of-mouth and gossip that reinforcements, _Verstärkungen_ to him, were due and was curious as to whether this raggedy band were them.

"Ja sie sind" the man astride the brown stallion replied, suddenly alight and cheeky in a way the group following him found jarring in contrast to his stoic hush throughout their trip. "Sie sind schwach und Englisch" he said, flapping a hand dismissively as his counterpart looked over his shoulder at those they spoke of. Seventy pairs of wide confused eyes met his gaze and he snorted, turning back to his comrade and snickering, "Wir sind _verloren_! Die Engländer kommen!" before spurring his horse and tearing up the path, intent on bringing news of the new arrivals to his superiors. They had been expected for some time.

As their guide's laughter at his gregarious comrade's antics echoed, along with said comrade's repetitions of 'Die Engländer kommen!', across the vast openness surrounding them, the ragtag group of soldiers and the nurses they had formed protective ranks around trudged on in varying levels of obliviousness over the content of the conversation they'd just witnessed. One particularly erudite infantryman translated the jestful rider's parting remark for his fellows.

"He's saying, 'The English are coming!'...At least they've got a sense of humour about them."

Rumbles of agreement were heard from various spots within the group but, sequestered away within the protective bubble created by the soldiers around them, Sally and Rose felt only disquiet. "How much of their conversation did you catch?" Sally asked, looking up at her friend briefly and meeting her equally unsure gaze.

"I heard a question" Rose said, "but I only know that because of his tone of voice. I also caught 'English', the word 'and', and what sounded like 'coming'..but otherwise, nothing. You?"

"I got 'English', 'we', and 'coming' as well. 'Kommen' yes?" Sally asked, trying to sound more confident than she was.

"Yes, that's the one."

The friends shared a quick nod, assuring each other that their confidence was unharmed despite their limited progress. This show was just that however.

Facade.

Front.

Not three steps later Rose drew in a deep breath, collapsed against Sally's left side and clung to her with dramatic abandon. "We're _DOOMED_!" she wailed, drawing odd looks and chuckles from those around them as the victim of her theatrical bent squawked indignantly and fought to keep them both from toppling over. Yet for all the moment's comic appeal, and for all the rushed assurances she managed to speak between bouts of exasperated scolding, Sally couldn't help agreeing with her friend's assessment.

After they had discovered the need for a proficiency in German midway through their voyage, they had devoted themselves to learning all they could in the time between their realisation and landfall. They had made it through all of the notes provided by Dr Hall and as a result could make limited conversation between themselves, but outside of this they had no practical experience with the language. Indeed their first real encounter with it had been hearing it spoken by the horsemen at the head of their brigade not two minutes previous.

Still trying to wrest Rose to her feet and outwardly laughing, albeit a little hysterically, along with her at her clownishness, Sally allowed herself to acknowledge the mortification she felt at their first abortive attempt at comprehending the language they had tried so hard to come to some kind of accord with in the frantic weeks prior to their arrival in the Colonies. Whatever it was they had _thought _German would sound like based on the notes and phonetic instructions they had studied, it seemed that neither she nor Rose could make heads or tails of it when it was imbued with the richness of enunciation and tone native speakers always give their mother tongue.

So caught was she in her contemplations on their predicament that she didn't realise they had reached their destination and been called to a disciplined halt until she walked into the back of the soldier immediately in front of her. After offering him hushed though heartfelt apologies and swatting Rose on the shoulder for snickering at her misstep, Sally took stock of their surroundings.

The path they had taken through the wide and open darkness left them standing on the main thoroughfare within the allied camp. To their back, the road continued on its way to places unknown, and before them, behind the slowly gathering group of people who seemed to be coming to greet them, their Hessian guide and his larking counterpart rejoined each other's company and trotted off into the long-gathered dark. Night had entirely drawn in around them on their journey from the coast, and regardless of the mid-summer's month, the air carried a faint chill and the lantern light which afforded Sally her view was blurred by the moisture in the air.

Returning her attention front and centre, she went up on her toes and tried to see past the wall of men that separated her from the people who milled and bustled before them. She could see no fewer than five uniformed soldiers, two men wearing fine clothes of a distinctly un-military nature and a woman dressed in nurse's whites who listened as the taller of the richly tailored men spoke close to her ear.

In short order attention was turned to the new arrivals. Each of the five soldiers introduced himself briskly, then called a pair of numbers which were soon understood to be the identification code for the different units of soldiers within the group. Each division had their distinct orders, and these were given clearly before they were dismissed to the barracks for a deserved night's rest.

Wading through the military jargon it soon became clear that all but one of the regiments were committed to outposts which fanned out from their current position, right through to the northwest edge of the State. The allied line needed strengthening, and the troops already on that line needed support and medical care. This need, the last soldier of the five explained, was where the nurses came in. After a quick rundown of their role within the war effort as a whole, he gestured for the slightly shorter of the tailored men to take his place before the intrigued if wary group of women. He excused himself with a slight bow as the other man began speaking, ferrying the last of the soldiers towards the barracks and leaving the nurses, for the first time since they set foot within the country, without any kind of formal guard between them and the wider world. Though all among their number remained resolute, they clustered together a hint more tightly for the lack.

"A fine, if late, evening to you ladies" the tailored man began cordially. "I am Doctor Robin Hall, head physician to this encampment."

As soon as his name was past his lips both Sally and Rose were riveted on him. This was the same Robin Hall who had provided them with instructional notes on German, handwritten in the backs of their housing and duties booklets. They took him in quickly, from the combed crest of sandy hair atop his head to the shinning tips of his shoes and concluded, after a moment of silent woman-to-woman communication, that he looked nothing like they had imagined he would.

"For this one night" he went on, oblivious to the scrutiny he was under, "your home will be the triage hospital, to your left. Thereafter, you will travel with the brigades you have been assigned to and will work with them to secure the peaceable resolution of the discord in these lands." As he spoke, he took a slip of paper from his pocket and unfolded it, looking between it and his audience.

"Now, if I could please request that a Miss Rose Clarke and a Miss Sally Rothering remain where they are for the moment. Everyone else.." he turned slightly gesturing for the woman in nurse's whites to come forward. At his call she broke from her whispered conversation with the other of the suited men and came forward as she was introduced.

"If you would follow Ms Taymar here, she will take you to your quarters."

In a flurry of half formed curtseys, Sally and Rose found themselves entirely deserted by their fellows and left, their near-hands entwined, under Dr Hall's watchful gaze. Once the commotion died down he approached them, his smile warming quite obviously as he stepped out of his role as public speaker and into the more worn, comfortable shoes of a mentor. With almost twenty-five years of experience behind him, he was greatly accustomed to calming the wary and receiving new hands.

"Miss Clarke, Miss Rothering, it's my pleasure to make your acquaintance" he said with companionable ease, grasping each woman's hand in turn as they introduced themselves. By sight they appeared to be nothing less than fine examples of modern women, early into their prime. If he was any judge he would guess, if only by the richness of their respective dresses, that Rose came from a wealthier family than her counterpart did. She was also taller than Sally by an appreciable margin and had auburn hair nestled beneath a daintily tied bonnet where her friend, by comparison, was fair haired and wore no hat. Inconsequential as these minutiae were, they were vital to Robin. His memory was for details and names, not faces, and he was resolved not to make a fool of himself by mistaking one of his charges for the other repeatedly.

They spoke of unimportant things as they walked towards the triage, the man who had bent the ear of Ms Taymar following them at a distance. Walking with the aid of an unnecessary ebony cane and clad in his topped and tailed coats, he exuded disdain for his surroundings and stuck out like a pig on a sheep farm. This is Henry Barmouth, head investor in every allied triage hospital in New Jersey. He is a tall man, over half a head taller than Dr Hall, and uses this to his advantage when going out of his way to intimidate those he feels require that particular kind of persuasion. Red haired, broad shouldered and with excess girth discussed by clever tailoring, he felt it to be his right, since he had paid for the supplies that allowed a triage to be placed here, to dictate the day-to-day running of the facilities. This was something he and Dr Hall clashed about regularly, but tonight he was of a mind to ingratiate, not intimidate. It would be imprudent, given the number of visitors he had under his roof, to leave them with anything but the best impression of him to take across the country when they moved on in the morning.

To enter the triage one must scale five steps. These lead to a small porch which in turn leads to the front door of the building. It, like the building's entirety, is painted white and has grown grey with age around the most well used edges. Once inside one finds on one's left a wall with three doors along its length. These are, in order, Mr Barmouth's office, Dr Hall's private quarters, and finally the quarters of the resident nurses. With one's back to this last door, one faces a long corridor which, on the left side, is dotted with windows overlooking the path through the wheat fields recently walked by the newly arrived troops. On the right side sits a storage room and next to that a room equipped with a large stove. Here is where the bandages and linens used daily are washed, and where water for bathing is heated.

Through the door at the end of this corridor is the ward itself. The room is wide and spacious, and houses twenty beds, in addition to that which the ward matron, Ms Taymar, calls her own. Originally it was planned that she would have the nurses quarters and the that nurses themselves would sleep on the ward to be at hand should they be needed, but such was her experience and affinity with the soldiers here that she insisted she be allowed to stay. She even earned herself a nickname from the Hessian forces. 'Ober' they call her, short for 'Oberschwester', which to them means matron or head nurse and to her is a source of mild irritation intercut with motherly warmth.

The first thing seen upon entering the ward is a wide pair of double doors on the far end of the long room. These lead out onto a balcony, upon which linins are hung out to dry and the day to day bustle of the camp is observed by off duty staff in quiet moments.

On the ward itself there are twenty six beds, though makeshift cots could be and have been used in the past when the number of wounded outstripped the ward's actual capacity. They ran the length of each wall and had between each of them a curtain hung for privacy.

Immediately on one's left at the entrance to the ward stands what used to be a storage room. It is no bigger than the stove-room but, unlike its counterpart, has been repurposed by Robin and Ms Taymar as a makeshift operating theatre. Though there is little more than a table and cabinets full of Robin's assorted medical equipment, the set up saves more lives than are lost to wounds or infection and for that the staff, and the patients, are immensely grateful.

Back out in the hall, Sally and Rose stand between Dr Hall and Mr Barmouth, who the former introduced as 'Henry' and the latter reiterated as 'Sir'. His good graces are for the visitors, not the people he considers his subordinates. Their papers, sodden from their trip across land and sea, are signed as required by both Messrs, but will be discarded later by Mr Barmouth as pure formality.

"See to yourselves" he said as he left their company, gesturing to their quarters before making for the ward and the visitors making themselves at home within. He felt their eyes on his back as he strode off, and mistook the weight of their combined gaze as that brought through envy. The man could not have been more wrong if he tried.

As soon as he was out of earshot Robin muttered a resentful, "Berk" and rolled his eyes, his candour bringing a carefully muffled titter from his nurses. Giving them his most affecting smile, he made a much more gentile gesture towards their quarters and spoke, "Your uniforms are laid out on your beds ladies, and your personal effects will arrive from the dock by late morning. If you wish to bathe, the stove and bathing water are in the last room on the right, down here" he gestured down the hallway which Mr Barmouth had just walked along.

"The door at the end of the hall leads onto the ward. Get a night's rest and mind the instructions Ms Taymar has left for you. In the morning, come and find me on the ward" before bidding them goodnight and following Mr Barmouth to the ward. A soft and exhausted pair of 'Goodnights' followed him, and within ten minutes of entering their quarters both women were asleep, fully dressed but for their boots and Rose's tidy bonnet, in their respective beds.

* * *

The little tête-à-tête between the soldiers reads:

"Sind diese das Verstärkungen?" Are these the reinforcements?

"Ja sie sind. Sie sind schwach und Englisch" Yes they are. They're weak and English.

"Wir sind _verloren_! Die Engländer kommen!" We're doomed! The English are coming!


	3. Chapter 3

From the author again: Once more, please find the German translations used in this chapter in the end-note. I haven't included them for every phrase I've used because a number of them are translated in the text. If you'd prefer a comprehensive list, drop me a line and I'll make one up swiftly. Thank you for reading.

* * *

**_Becoming our role, and first engagements_**

Morning came slowly to the camp on the hill. Lit up by a swathe of golden light, the wheat fields rolling their lazy way across the land seemed to shimmer as a soft breeze caught through them and caused the stalks to sway and clatter. The air was fresh and the camp, still suffused with the deep night's hush, woke gently to the break of the day. For the most part at least. Within the nurses' quarters, all was decidedly not well. A fit was in the midst of being pitched.

"She must be joking!" Rose exclaimed for the third time in the scant five minutes since she had read through Ms Taymar's edicts. She paced the length of the room, a twenty-foot by twenty-foot box with a bed in the top and bottom corners on the right hand side, one hand holding the note from the matron, the other knotted in her hair holding it back from her face.

"I don't think she is dear" Sally said, staring at herself in the small mirror hanging over the wash basin in the left and topmost corner of the room. Her back to the door, and to Rose, she glanced down at her copy of Ms Taymar's instructions and began re-reading that which was causing her friend such grief.

'In order to prevent the spreading of li-'

"I WILL NOT CUT OFF MY HAIR!" Rose howled defiantly, her volume making her friend jump and turn to her as she tossed the paper to the ground and stamped on it with a bare foot. Sally watched her display with a mixture of amusement and concern. It couldn't even be an hour past dawn yet. The way she was going, Rose would wake half the camp!

"It's a preventative measure" she put in quickly, trying to reason with her rancorous companion "to keep the threat of lice at bay." Met with a scandalised glare she went on, guessing at the reason behind the order. "We're new in the country, off a ship full of soldiers and rats. Can you blame the matron for wanting to make sure we aren't lice-ridden before letting us near patients?"

"I do NOT" Rose bit out from between clenched teeth "have LICE!"

"Well nor do I!"

"Then why are we debating this!" the list was picked up and brandished by she who once again took to pacing to and fro as Sally watched. Bemused, the seated woman spoke up.

"I don't understand your problem with it" she huffed, turning away from her to rummage through the draws of the small cabinet the washbasin sat upon. Within the slender pair she found numerous items for personal grooming that had kindly been provided for their stay. Brushes and combs, even plain and sturdy hair clips were on hand, as well as an item that, when she saw it, convinced Sally that the matron had thought to facilitate the undertaking of her orders, not just to see them issued. Cautiously, she fingered the bone-handled implement, listening with one ear to Rose's grumblings and her angst-driven stomping. Contemplating her next move.

She could empathise to a point with her friend's horror at the thought of being shorn. Though Sally had learned through sharing quarters with her during their trip across the sea that outward expressions of femininity concerned Rose much more than they did her, the prospect of losing her hair to the cause did not light mirth or joy in her soul. She did, however, understand the need for minimising the risks of lice outbreaks. It would be another problem, were one to take place, put upon an already stretched medical facility. One which they could not afford.

Resolved, Sally squirreled the bone-handled implement into her lap quickly. "It's just hair Rose" she said, glancing over at her before turning back to her reflection in the mirror. She was decided. If it would take seeing it done to get Rose onboard, so be it.

"It's not JUST anything it..it's..Sally, what're you doing?" Her tone changed from outraged to curious to horrified as she watched her counterpart unfold what turned out to be a straight razor. "Don't you come near me with that!" she yelped, backpedalling quickly as the blade was raised.

"I'm not about to chase you with it, you silly thing" Sally huffed, reaching up to wind a lock of hair about her forefinger. She tugged it out to its full length, set the edge of the razor to it and sheared it away cleanly, watching as it fluttered down into the basin. Her gaze remained upon it for a number of breaths before she again looked at herself in the mirror, noting that a fine clump was missing now from above her right eye. She raised a hand and fluffed at what remained with her fingers, feeling the odd sensation of unevenly cut short hair prickling her skin.

At length, she blew a soft breath through her nose and concluded that, while strange, it certainly wasn't as mortal a thing as Rose seemed to think it would be. Tilting her head slightly as she regarded her reflection, she selected another lock, tugged it to full stretch, raised the blade again, and then cut it away. It's not as if she could _stop_ now that she'd started.

Behind her Rose gaped, horrified.

"You'll end up bald if you carry on that way!" she said, coming forward and fretfully hovering at Sally's back as she lopped away, never once breaking eye contact with herself in the mirror.

"Don't be silly" came the preoccupied response, spoken amid a flurry of cuts and a rain of shorn hair. "I'm leaving enough to run a brush through."

Rose despaired. "You could run a brush through half an inch!" she said, wringing her hands at the thought of having so little hair left upon her head. She wasn't so childish that the thought of losing a gathering of inches perturbed her, but to lose anything more than three quarters of the length she had, the manicured ends of which touched the small of her back at present, was just ungodly.

"Exactly" Sally replied, half of her head now left more or less covered by little more than an inch of gently curling blonde fluff. "It's out of the way and very easy to keep clean."

With a huff Rose turned from the butchery taking place before the mirror. "You're mad" she said, throwing up her hands and making her way back to her bed. She had remade it after her night's sleep and had, prior to reading Ms Taymar's note, laid out her uniform neatly. Returning to it now, she rubbed a corner of the bluish-grey material that made up the majority of the practical dress between her fingertips to test its quality.

As well as the dress, they had each been provided with a white apron and a cap to keep their hair back, and in picking up and slipping on the latter Rose concluded that she could spare herself the _Sally-with-a-razorblade treatment_ and keep her locks at shoulder length without them being burdensome. She had seen this Ms Taymar woman the night previous, and _she_ certainly did not have nought but fluff upon _her_ head. If it truly was the fear of lice that precipitated the order to clip their hair, she would not go to Sally's lengths unless the matron also did.

While her companion was dutifully absorbed by the mirror, Rose took the opportunity to make for the stove-room Dr Hall had mentioned the night previous. She wanted to wash before changing into her uniform and said so to Sally before cracking open the door and peeping out into the hall beyond. Thanks to the various shades of white that decorated the walls, the morning light that crept in through the windows seemed doubly bright compared to the candlelit and curtained dim of their quarters. Glancing to the right and then out along the corridor towards the ward, Rose found not a soul out to wander. She answered her counterpart's distracted, "Bring me back a pail, please" with a nod, missing the conspiratory grin she spoke it through before tiptoeing quietly, cautiously, into the hall.

Gathering her skirts to curtail their propensity for rustling, she made haste to the stove-room, betraying herself and her cautious approach when her curiosity was piqued by muffled voices from within the ward. She pressed herself lightly against the door to listen better, and heard fractured details regarding where the nurses with whom she and Sally had travelled were heading when they moved out with their respective contingents. Feeling the need to, she devoted a moment to pray for their safety before going about her business and easing open the door between corridor and stove-room.

A wall of heat hit her as soon as the door swung open and she squinted against it, letting out a discomforted 'Uhffff..' as she entered and approached the wide open-bellied stove at the back of the room. It was stone made from top to bottom and was heating, upon a metal grill, four bubbling pots of water. Above these two of these pots, hung across two wide-set horizontal poles, bed sheets were in the process of being cleansed by the rising steam.

Not wanting to pilfer water that was already being used, Rose took up a wooden pail and dipped it in the last pot, hefting it clear and earning a face full of steam for her trouble. She repeated this with a luckily found second pail, remembering Sally's request, then made slightly wobbly haste back to their quarters. Weighed down with a pail in each hand and finding it necessary to keep to near silence in her travels, appearing graceful was, at this moment, the least of her concerns.

Once she returned she gave the room her back briefly to nudge the door closed properly, and it was then, in that moment of inattention, that Sally struck.

"Rose!" she called, her voice purposefully made deep and commanding.

The woman yipped with fright at the sudden commotion, turned to look at she who had called to her, took a pause of three seconds to comprehend quite what she was looking at, then almost dropped the pails laughing. Sally stood between their beds, arms crossed over her chest, her shorn head tipped back proudly, feet apart, in her ragged travelling dress with a lock of her own hair caught between her curled upper lip and her nose. Clearly she had been waiting for Rose's return.

"I!" she proclaimed, raising a finger in an authoritative manner, "am Henry Barmouth! And I declare that you" she pointed at Rose with her once raised finger, "little nurse, will call me SIR!"

Sliding down the wall, the pails just about saved from crashing down with her, Rose laughed until tears rolled down her cheeks and Sally, her act over as soon as that last and strident 'SIR' left her lips, collapsed along with her.

"Sally!" Rose wheezed, dragging herself upright enough that she could see her friend's crumpled form where she had fallen cackling against her bed, "He doesn't even have a moustache you _mad_ thing!"

"But God he SHOULD have, Rose!" Sally laughed, "He SHOULD have! It might cover that spiteful face of his and make it more-"

"Shhhhhhhh!" Rose hushed quickly, crawling over to her friend's side and gathering her into an embrace that she easily returned. "If he _hears_ you.." she snickered, wiping the other woman's cheeks free of mirth-brought tears.

"He'll what?" Sally laughed, holding the lock of hair she had fashioned into a crude facial adornment up over Rose's top lip and falling prey to another brief spate of cackling before regaining enough command over her faculties to opine, "Curse me with his spitefulness?"

"You could lose your place here, silly.." her briefly-tashed friend replied, a flicker of concern brought by that thought stealing across her face as she tried in vain to straighten the wear-and-tear-skewed collar of her companion's dress. "Then where would I be?"

Still chuckling softly, Sally smiled at her friend's words. "You'd be here" she said jovially, unperturbed by the thought of being exiled for her humour. Had she been caught by the man she had parodied she would have been contrite, but now, safe in her anonymity, she revelled in her cheek. It was well meant really. That Barmouth fellow, with all his finery and his painted-on smile, deserved a little ribbing.

"And I" she continued, "would have a pleasurable cruise back to London in the hold of a frigate! Without the panicked rush to learn a language to ruin it this time."

"Oh _honestly_" Rose scoffed fondly, rolling her eyes and dragging Sally to her feet once their laughter had properly abated.

They parted then, to opposite ends of their quarters to bathe in privacy, backs turned, before changing into their uniform blues and whites and eyeing each other critically. They spent minutes fixing and primping, ensuring a proper fit and presentation before once again parting ways, Sally heading out to the ward as Dr Hall had instructed the night prior, while Rose attended to her hair by the mirror.

Both foresaw a mass of work ahead.

Neither was mistaken.

* * *

By the time Sally made it onto the ward that morning, the visiting nurses had long departed for their posts elsewhere within the State. As soon as she had stepped within the room Dr Hall, after having performed a double take of surprising force at the state of her hair, tasked her, since they had no patients to see to at present, with both cleaning the room from top to bottom to ready it for receiving the inevitable wounded, and with restocking the cupboards which sat between the operating room's outer wall and Ms Taymar's bed. They had been arranged there, the doctor told her, to discourage the soldiers from stealing supplies. The Oberschwester could be a frightening woman when she wanted to be, he said, and the thought of incurring her wrath deterred all but the most foolish.

Having met the woman as soon as she entered the room, Sally both could and couldn't fathom how she had earned such a reputation. She had a severe cast to her, certainly, but she was also kindly, industrious and quick witted with an infectious laugh and perceptive, wise eyes. She couldn't have been older than forty, but her presence felt _ancient_ and commanded respect.

So struck by this was Sally that, when a chore took the matron from the room for a time, she asked Robin about it. His reply was spoken through a knowing smile.

"Tell me this" he said, handing over the next crate of supplies to his curious nurse. "Knowing Ms Taymar as you do, would you steal from these cupboards?"

"What?" Sally spluttered, scandalised. "Never."

"Exactly" Robin replied, "Never mind how it works. It just does."

With that in mind and glad of the leave she had been granted to resupply the Oberschwester's coveted shelves, Sally found herself, at around noon and after the ward was spotlessly clean, knelt between open doors, her head and both hands well within the cupboard she was stocking. Blind to the room, she did not notice the arrival of company until, reaching back for another item to add to the shelf she was working on, she felt fingers touch her own; their owner passing her the very thing she had sought.

Assuming her helper was either Dr Hall or Rose, Sally forgave them the start she got from the unexpected contact and spoke a companionable "Thank you" as she sat the item in its place and extricated herself from the cupboard's depths carefully. Straightening, she turned to add a smile to her thanks, but ended up gifting it to neither of the persons she expected to. Instead she found herself being rather shyly looked upon by a tall and rangy young man who was clad quite formally in deep blues and crisp whites. Not knowing him by sight, Sally consciously warmed her demeanour and set about making him feel welcome.

"Hello there sir" she said, conjuring her most sincere and pleasant smile. "May I help you?"

The response she got drained that warmth from her almost entirely.

"Hallo Schwester" he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot while trying his best to tamp down the cotton-mouthed unease new people, particularly new _female_ ones, always brought out in him. "Willkommen in Amerika."

The moment between those words and his next lasted an eternity for Sally. Inside, behind her newly shocked expression, her nightmare situation seemed to have come real. Here was a soldier, obviously a Hessian one, who could well have come to her seeking assistance and she, unpractised she, could barely understand enough of his language to render whatever aid it was he needed.

Before the panic could send her into a hyperventilation fit however, she realised that, unlike in her imagined nightmare, she had understood almost everything the young man had said. The word 'Schwester' was a mystery for now, but the rest she puzzled out with minimal trouble.

'Hello [Schwester]. Welcome to America.'

That realisation brought the warmth back to her in a rush. She had _caught _those words! Had understood them! And damn it all if she wasn't about to thank him for the welcome in his own tongue when he spoke again.

"Ich heiße Thomas" he said through that same shy smile, patting himself on the chest to aid comprehension.

"Thomas.." Sally repeated, enraptured by the fact that she actually understood what he had told her. True, these words were simple. The most basic things Dr Hall's notes had taught her and Rose, and those which, through practicing with each other, they had learnt most quickly. And yes, the word 'heiße', like 'Schwester', was new to her. But it was a start! Here she was, weeks after her rushed practice in the bowels of a Frigate, being spoken to by a Hessian in his native tongue. And she was confident enough in what he was telling her to reply.

"Hallo Thomas" she said, trying to mimic his intonation while giving a polite curtsey. He grinned at her, bowing from the waist in response, and she actually managed to laugh around her introduction, "I..ich bin Sally."

"Hallo Sally" he mimicked, doing his level best to imitate _her_ intonation. His 'S' came out as a 'zzz' and turned her name from 'Sally' to 'Zally', but that was nothing to complain about in her book. Here was progress! Here was comprehension! And a chance to flex her very..very..limited mastery of German with a seemingly willing and, more importantly, seemingly _jovial_ native speaker. Her hands shook with nerves, and she knew, just knew, that she was butchering the words she said with her foreign accent and lack of experience, but she tried her best regardless.

"Yes, er..Ja, Hallo" she began, flushing at having stumbled at the first hurdle and gathering the scant few words she knew together into a somewhat coherent message.

"Ich...ich spreche nur ein..._bisschen_ Deutsch" she managed, repeating the phrase she and Rose had worked on learning as a kind of shield against unintelligible barrages of unfamiliar words. They had decided against saying, 'I don't speak any German' to German people IN German right from the off. It was simply a contradiction of logic to say such a thing while speaking the language you profess to be unable to speak at all. Thus, 'I can only speak a little German' was Sally's introductory phrase of choice, and her recently arrived companion gave an understanding nod, seemingly glad both for her honesty, and for the fact that she was speaking in his mother tongue.

Shifting a little on the spot, much as Thomas had moments before, she raised a hand and made an inch between her thumb and forefinger, adding "..sehr wenig.." or 'very little' with entirely honest embarrassment and receiving, for her attempt at humour, a quirked grin and a huff of laughter.

"Aber.." she added quickly, wanting to get all of the pre-learned 'I'm new to this language, have mercy' phrases out of the way before her seemingly highly entertained company could interject and throw off her stride.

"Aber ich...ahh...Aber ich versuche zu lernen."

The words, declared with finality and punctuated with a pleased nod, were an expression of the wish to learn more of the language that was giving her trouble. They came out in a bit of a rush, but were intelligible enough that they merited a returned nod and another quirk of the lips from her Hessian guest.

The effort she was putting forth was rewarded most unexpectedly then, for when he next spoke it was in direct answer to her words. A continuation of their rickety conversion.

And it was in English.

"Und..ah..I" he said, a hint unsure of his words at first but brightening when Sally's face lit up in recognition. He copied her mimed inch with his forefinger and thumb, finishing his thought carefully, "speak..little..Englisch..also."

So pleased was she by his attempt, and lacking the language skills to tell him properly, Sally beamed for his effort and clapped her hands lightly in appreciation, delighting in the rakish smile she was given in return. She drew breath to praise him in English, regardless of his professed lack in proficiency, when a third voice echoed across the room,

"Thomas!"

The poor man snapped to so quickly he almost tripped himself up, turning with all haste to see the curious though stern figure of Dr Hall emerging from the operating room. Sally turned sharply to face him also, cheeks flaming, and favoured him with a polite and, given his station as her direct superior, intrinsically necessary curtsey. She was about to greet him verbally, but was beaten to the punch by Thomas.

"Hallo Herr Doktor!" he enthused, covering his embarrassment at being caught engaging one of the nurses in conversation without any real reason but curiosity with exuberance. "Wie geht es dir?"

"Mir geht es gut, Thomas" Dr Hall replied without missing a beat. He watched the startled pair closely for a brief moment, wary from long experience of the overtures soldiers have a habit of making towards women in encampments such as this. Regardless of the fact that he knew Thomas well, and was certain that his reason for lingering on the ward was purely innocent, he was and always would be protective of his nurses.

Satisfied that he had made his presence felt, Robin gave the flustered soldier a pointed though not unkind look. "Lassen Sie in Ruhe, Junge" he said, nodding towards double doors at the far end of the ward. Vaulting the railing had been Thomas's favoured mode of entry into the triage since he first arrived in the camp, and he made his exit the same way after giving a deep bow to the still flushed lady and bidding both she and the doctor a hasty, and very _English_ "G'bye!"

Shaking his head fondly, Dr Hall turned his attention to Sally, saying, "I do hope our Thomas didn't give you a fright. He's made it his mission to get to know the staff here as they come and go."

"Oh..Oh no, not at all" Sally replied, trying to rub the blush from her cheeks with her palms. "It's just that I'd never..never had the opportunity to..ah.." she gestured between herself and the direction of Thomas's escape. Robin understood.

"To speak German with a German" he said.

"Yes" Sally spoke through a sigh, her shoulders slumping slightly with relief at their being on the same page. Robin 'hmmm'd' knowingly.

"I understand the feeling" he said, stooping to pack away the last of the supplies Sally had been putting to inventory when she had been interrupted. Though she fluttered at his back, uneasy about her task being taken over by he who had first given it to her, the chore was done too quickly for her to help further.

As Dr Hall stood again and closed the cupboard doors, Sally's curiosity got the better of her.

"If I might ask, doctor.." she began, waiting for the return of his curious gaze and his nod of assent before continuing. "You called him, 'Our Thomas'. Have you known him long?"

Robin answered as he steered Sally into the operating room. More supplies needed inventorying and two sets of hands would cut through the work in half the time. "Thomas arrived here about four months ago" he said, sorting through the various bottles of herbs and unguents festooned across the operating table.

"He's only a young man, as you could probably tell by looking at him. Barely nineteen years old, and half way across the world from home fighting a war between countries that aren't his. He was in here wounded not three days after his arrival, and was transferred, after that, from the platoon he came here with to the home guard."

"Home guard?" Sally asked, sorting the vials Dr Hall passed to her into alphabetical order based on the labels affixed to their sides.

"Hm? Oh yes. The garrison based permanently at this encampment" Robin clarified, squinting at one vial in particular before handing it off to his curious assistant and taking up another. "Because we're quite the sizeable outpost, we need a standing guard in case we're discovered. So far we've been lucky. Two raids in almost a year is not bad going."

"Not bad at all" Sally had to agree, frowning faintly in thought. Something Dr Hall had said of Thomas caught in her mind as she packed the bottles she had sorted into their stand ready to be transferred into the cupboards lining the far wall.

"Is it rude of me to be curious over how Thomas came to be injured when he first arrived?" she asked. "I only ask because you mentioned raids and-" falling silent when Robin gave an amused chuckle and passed her another set of vials to sort, taking those she had packed neatly away and setting them in their appropriate place in the cupboard. When he'd arrived he had removed the front panel of each of the cupboard doors, allowing him to reach within quickly in an emergency without having to pull open doors and search when time was against him. The frames remained in place for sturdiness more than anything, and formed a handy barrier which stopped haste-quickened fingers from tipping entire rows of vials onto the floor.

"He'd fallen off his horse" he explained, returning to the table once he was happy with the first stand's placement. "Came in covered in cuts and with a badly bruised hip. He was lucky he didn't break anything honestly. We, Ms Taymar and I, feared he had done, for he couldn't walk right for a good four days after the accident."

"Good Lord" Sally gasped, "A break that serious would have surely killed him."

"Yes" Robin agreed, "He's a very lucky boy."

Giving a nod, Sally winced in sympathy for the poor lad's pain and mulled through the information she'd received while filling another little bottle rack with her latest acquisitions.

"He's a horseman then?" she asked.

"Well he fancies himself to be" Dr Hall chuffed. "He's always telling stories about the dark riders and the heroics of the cavalry that in turns fill him with fear and stoke his courage."

Sally couldn't help but give a giggle at the thought. "Dark riders you say? He's got quite the imagination, this Thomas, hasn't he." A tangential thought came then. "Are all of the cavalrymen stationed here Hessian?"

"Yes he does and no, they aren't." Robin said, gladly receiving the second rack of vials and finding it a place within the cupboard. "All told we have more Englishmen on horseback than we do German ones. It would seem though that the role of guide has fallen to the Hessians this time round, hence your having seen a couple of them mounted."

"Oh I see"

"On a similar note" he went on, "Thomas's favourite tale at present concerns a Hessian. They always do, Thomas being Hessian himself. It makes the stories more relatable for him I think. Der Reiter, he calls him. 'The Rider', or 'The Horseman' if you prefer."

"How curious" Sally said, smiling at the prospect of a story. "What else is there to this tale, doctor?"

Robin chuckled softly at her inquisitiveness, an idea presenting itself at this fortunate turn in their conversation. He rested his elbows on the table between them, lacing his fingers thoughtfully and regarding the woman in silence for a moment, as if considering which part of the tale to tell next.

"You're truly interested?" he asked.

"Of course" she rejoined, eagerness making her curiosity shine a little in the dim room. She seemed so honestly keen that Robin almost, almost felt remorse in springing his trap.

"Ask Thomas to tell you" he said, chuckling openly as her face fell.

"I..What? But..That was unkind!" Sally scolded jovially, forgetting herself for a moment in the comradery that seemed to have formed in the sharing of the tale and the talk of unlucky Thomas and his fall from his horse.

"Honestly doctor, I don't know that I could" she continued, reigning in her manner consciously and taking up her task with the vials once more. Robin noticed this display of propriety and smiled for it, even though it was misplaced in these, their off duty hours. He would allow her to become accustomed to that with time. For now, the mentor in him sensed the presence of confidence that needed shoring up.

"I'm sure you could" he said, giving his charge a reassuring smile as they got back to work. "Thomas is by far the least threatening Hessian member of the home guard, and I know for a fact that he'd love a chance to regale you. He was so excited about the arrival of the troops and your good selves that he rode out to meet you the night you arrived."

Sally blinked, again struck by a detail, her fingers sent fumbling over the vial she had just picked up. "He came to.."

"Yes. You'll remember him of course. The silly sod was yelling 'Die Engländer kommen' as he rode up to the camp. I heard him from my office. His sergeant nearly ran him through for all the noise he made."

"Oh my goodness!" Sally laughed, "THAT was Thomas? I can't b-"

"Sally!" a voice sounded from the doorway, deep with affect and profoundly masculine. With a jump and a gasp Sally turned and found Rose leant with theatrical aplomb against the door frame, an auburn lock of hair that had been fashioned into a crude facial adornment held between her thumb and forefinger across her top lip.

"Beautiful isn't it?" she said, batting her lashes and watching delightedly as her friend sputtered then succumbed to gales of laughter. Dr Hall, unused to though pleasantly surprised by Rose's brand of humour, fought a noble but losing battle to keep a straight face. As the comic in question succumbed also, she flipped the faux-tash into her pocket as the matron, with whom she had spent the morning learning about her various duties, was drawn by the ruckus, intent on scolding her for shirking chores.

_Yes_, Rose thought as the scowling older woman approached, setting a wagging finger to work with a mirthful twinkle in her eye. _I think I'll like it here_.

* * *

Translations:

"Wie geht es dir?" How are you?

"Mir geht es gut, Thomas." I am well, Thomas.

"Lassen Sie in Ruhe, Junge" Leave her alone boy.


	4. Chapter 4

A note from the author: As always, any translations that aren't tackled in the text are in the note at the end of the chapter.

* * *

_**Thomas' tale**_

It took Sally almost a month to feel comfortable enough with both Thomas and her German to risk asking the young Hessian to recount the story Dr Hall had mentioned. As a proper Georgian lady she took interest from men-folk, particularly men-folk of the soldierly kind, with one pinch of discretion and two of suspicion, and despite the fact that Robin had assured her that the lad was simply curious and looking for more delicate company than the men of his division, she was cautious.

Gladly however, the gangly youth's interest was not restricted to her alone. Rose too found herself the recipient of curious glances, smiles and the occasional wave when her path and his would cross, though she at first was not treated to a verbal greeting. His silence frankly baffled her, but to Sally it was unsurprising. After their initial meeting, Thomas would have been wary of earning Dr Hall's wrath for distracting she and Rose while they worked, and since they often stuck together in their off duty hours she reasoned that the bashful young man likely felt uneasy about coming up and attempting to make conversation with them.

It's much easier on the pride, after all, to fumble through a conversation with one person than it is to try and engage two.

Sensing though that a fine prank might be done on Rose in these particular circumstances, Sally kept her thoughts on Thomas' silence to herself. She even teased her a little, saying that he had taken a fancy to her and was shy of speaking with her because of it. This well-meant prodding and conjecture went on for two full weeks before Rose, much to her friend's amusement, decided to tackle their skittish seeming-admirer directly. When next she saw him loitering on the triage's balcony, she marched right out there to give him a proper dressing down. Unfortunately however, the detail that Sally's dutiful silence had kept from her made itself apparent as soon as her tirade ended with a huffed, "So what do you have to say for yourself?!"

Poor Thomas, lost by the quickly spoken avalanche of English and feeling more than a little embarrassed, replied as politely as possible. "Ich spreche nur ein bisschen Englisch, Schwester" he said, watching the indignation in her face become first confusion, then roaring embarrassment.

What she did in response endeared her to him instantly.

She switched to German first, feigning calm and saying, "Einen Augenblick bitte" with practised clarity. This phrase, 'one moment please', was one of those that she and Sally had learned to save them from tight spots such as this, and it came easily to her despite her absolute mortification.

Thomas, being a gentleman and finding the situation increasingly hilarious, answered with a slightly jerky nod and watched as Rose then turned, opened the door between the balcony and the blessedly sparsely populated ward and screamed, "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THAT HE'S HESSIAN?!" at the top of her lungs.

Three outcomes resulted from this course of action.

Firstly, irrespective of the fact that half of what she yelled escaped his comprehension, Thomas barely made it from balcony to street upright he was laughing so hard and Sally, within the ward, fared no better. She'd just about managed to reply, "His _uniform_, you silly thing!" before she too was lost to gales of mirth.

Secondly, royally piqued by her teasing, Rose didn't speak to her fellow nurse for three and one-half days.

And thirdly, the Oberschwester docked both women two days allowance; Rose for the ruckus she caused with her hollering, and Sally for earning and being the recipient of said hollering.

Fair was fair after all. There was no playing favourites here.

It was the eve of the fourth day of frigid silence when Sally, after two hours of honest contrition and apologies for being such a troublesome cur, managed to coax Rose out onto the balcony again with promises of tea laced with honey and a thimble's worth of liquor from the Quartermaster's store. She didn't tell the still indignant woman that it was Thomas' alcohol ration that she had used, with his permission of course, to lace the brew. Nor did she tell her that he would be out on the balcony waiting for them when they arrived. In the end though, after a little cold glaring and a mug of tea each, the ice was finally broken. That formative meeting became the starter for an every-other-day habit that persisted to the present, and now, on a warm summer's evening in mid August with the three of them as thick as thieves, they and Dr Hall were gathered on the balcony to hear Thomas' rendition of what he called, 'Die Geschichte des Reiters'.

The story of the Horseman.

"Thank you again for coming out, Doctor" Rose smiled as she settled beside Sally, jostling her gently with her elbow and being jostled back before they took up their cups of tea and stirred a small glob of honey from the pot sitting by Robin's side into each with slender teaspoons. They had invited the man along both to give him a break from his seemingly endless duties on the ward, and to use him as a resource if their Hessian friend's verbiage passed them by as he recounted his tale. The Doctor knew this, and he didn't mind in the slightest.

"Thank you for the invitation" he replied, settling down with his back against the balcony's fence and sipping from his own cup - a dash of gin cut with water - while Thomas wrestled down one of the clean sheets from the drying poles that hung on the balcony's back side and tied it, with due ceremony, cloak-like about his neck. He knew the story he was sitting in on well, having sat through it at least twice since Thomas had distilled it from the gossip of his comrades, but looked forward to the telling regardless. The young lad had a flare for the dramatic that he found quite amusing in small doses.

As if to prove this, Thomas puffed out his chest and clapped his hands twice, facing his audience to call out, "Damen und Herren!" He preened with pride at how the nurses smiled and whispered to each other at the sight of him, and gave Doctor Hall a pointed, expectant look. This caught Robin mid-sip and he swallowed quickly, his role as the evening's designated translator seemingly more encompassing than first he'd thought.

"Es tut mir leid Thomas" he apologised, glancing at Sally and Rose and saying, as his Hessian counterpart had moments before, "Ladies and gentlemen.."

Thomas beamed. "Die Geschichte des Reiters ist blutig.." he said, his expression becoming serious as he spoke. "Blutigen und gewalttätigen.." A glance at Robin, who gladly obliged.

"The story of the Horseman is bloody. Bloody and violent."

The nurses huddled closer together, both more excited than fearful despite the gory preface. Sally even dared a little request of their story-teller. "Thomas? Englisch bitte? Tell little bits in English, maybe?" She mimed their inch between her thumb and forefinger as she spoke, and although he looked a hint daunted at first, Thomas gave a little nod.

"Ein bisschen" he agreed, copying the mimed inch and adding, "Später" to buy himself some time to gather the English he had to share with them. He wasn't terrible by any means, having practised with the staff, soldiers and occasional visitors from the farm a quarter mile along the road. He was simply wary, even now, of showing himself up in front of his friends. Nodding came from the nurses at his words, small ones like those..like 'a bit' and 'later'..coming easily to them now, and he favoured them and Robin with another smile as he continued.

"Der Reiter kommt aus Hessen-Kassel"

"The Horseman comes from Hesse-Kassel" Robin said, adding, "one of the larger principalities in the region" to help his very English charges keep up.

"Er wurde hier gesandt um den Aufruhr zu unterdrücken."

"He was sent here to suppress the rebellion."

"Zu kämpfen.."

"To fight.."

"Zu töten.."

"To kill.."

Thomas tilted his head slightly, nodding towards Sally and Rose. "Für dein König."

Robin pursed his lips to keep from smiling at the show he was putting on. "For your king."

The nurses braved a glance at each other, then looked back towards Thomas with cautious curiosity. "He's an ally then?" Rose asked, the doctor translating the question at Thomas' slightly confused glance.

"Ist er ein Verbündeter?"

The young soldier drew in a breath, seemingly contemplating the question. "Ally.." he began, piecing together what he wanted to say carefully. "Ally is..friend. Der Reiter..he is..not that. Not friend. He..ahh.." A glance for Robin. "Söldner?"

"Mercenary" the doctor supplied, pleased to hear him exercising his English.

"Mercenary.." Thomas repeated, testing the word. Pleased with it, he gave a nod. "Mercenary. Ally.." he shook his head, waving the idea away, "means nothing."

"So he'd kill us?" Sally brooked guardedly.

Another quick look from Thomas to Robin. The latter sipped from his cup before translating, "Würde er uns töten?" and the former, hearing this, smirked fiendishly.

"Wenn Sie waren in seinem Weg, ja" he said.

"If you were in his way, yes."

Puffing up again as the nurses winced, Thomas spread his arms wide and moved on with his tale; his use of English becoming a hint more bold as he went on. "Der Reiter go over ze landt. Follows ze soldiers wie ein Hund auf einem Geruch."

"Like a dog on a scent" Robin put in quietly.

"Follows to battle, und ven it come he lead his horse in vollem Galopp.."

"..at full gallop.."

"..und nimmt die Köpfe seiner Feinde!"

"And takes the heads of his enemies."

Again Sally and Rose chanced a glance at each other. This time though, trepidation reigned. They huddled closer still as Thomas waded on gleefully, and as he began to describe his protagonist they translated his words before Robin did to distract themselves from the unease unfurling in their bellies.

"Er ist groß " Thomas said, puffing up yet again and trying to make himself look larger than he was with his sheet-cloak.

"He is..big?" Rose guessed.

"Tall" Sally put in thoughtfully, Robin smiling at their effort. "..Or both maybe..broad and tall.."

"That makes sense" her auburn-haired compatriot replied, waving Thomas on.

"Mächtig.." he said, tapping his biceps to help them along.

"..Mighty?" Sally tried. "That sounded like mighty to me.."

Rose snuffled. "In English you mean."

"Well yes.."

"I'll say..powerful?" She glanced at Robin. "Is that right, Doctor?"

He nodded indulgently. "Correct Rose. Powerful. Strong. Mighty would also work Sally, so your guess wasn't far off."

A toast from a teacup later, Sally turned her grin first upon Robin, then Thomas. "What else? He's tall and strong.."

"Gewalttätig.."

"Violent" they chorused, recognising the word.

"Er trägt schwarze Rüstung."

"He wears black armour" the doctor supplied at Rose's slightly fuddled glance.

"Seine Klinge ist so heiß wie Höllenfeuer.."

And again he assisted. "His blade is as hot as Hellfire.."

"..und sein Pferd ist riesig und schwarz wie die Nacht!"

Rose perked up now. "I got horse there.." she put in, looking to the doctor for affirmation. "Pferd is horse, isn't it?"

"That it is" he confirmed, looking between his nurses with obvious amusement. "Can you piece the rest together?"

"Schwarz is..black..I think.." Sally volunteered after a moment's thought. "So..a black horse?"

"A..'riesig' he said.." Rose added. "Riesig..huge? A huge black horse?"

"That's right" Robin smiled. "His horse is huge, and as black as night."

Listening as they dissected his words, Thomas beamed and shared the next detail; his second favourite all told. "Seine Zähne sind wie Messer."

"His.." Sally began, tripping over a word. His..Rose" she glanced to her friend, "Zähne?"

Rose in turn glanced at Robin. "That's teeth, isn't it?"

He tilted his head a hint to the right in acknowledgement. "Correct again."

Sally's brow furrowed in thought. "So his teeth are.." She hushed when Rose patted her arm sharply, the solution coming to her in a rush.

"Messer is the word for knife!" she enthused, turning compelled though confused eyes on Thomas. "His teeth are like knives. I've got that right, haven't I? Bin ich richtig?"

"Ja!" Thomas said, tapping his front teeth for emphasis. "Like knives."

"Why are they like that?" Sally asked, horror in her tone. "Did he file them? Did they break?"

"Made so himself" Thomas proclaimed, pleased that he was able to follow those questions with relative ease. "Did it for fear..to make enemies fear him..make them know him..He..ah..ein symbol.." He glanced quickly at Robin, but found the concern he had about his words allayed quickly.

"Das Wort ist dasselbe auf Englisch" the doctor told him.

The word is the same in English.

Thomas preened, returning his attention to his story. "Ein symbol for _fear_. Zey see him coming to battle.." he chuffed out a laugh and swept his cloak-sheet back as he pointed out along the cobbled path beyond the balcony, "zey _run_! Er ist der Teufel zu seinen Feinden."

Rose frowned faintly, caught on a word. "Teufel?" she repeated, directing her question to Thomas now, not Robin. "What is Teufel?"

The young Hessian thought for a moment, trying the word, "_Plague_?" before that which he was searching for came to him. "Nein! _Devil_. Not plague. Das Wort ist 'Devil'. Ze Devil to his enemies." His courage soaring at having puzzled things out, he barrelled on. "Bloot everyvere he goes, zey speak. Again ant again...bloot. Even ze men of Gott fear him..speak he bringt ze Satan vit him. Bevare, zey speak. Zey speak, 'Tod auf dem Pferderücken'..dead..no, no, _death_ on horseback. Death on horseback. Omen of _death _for them! And best! Und am besten von allen! Er kennt diesen Ort!"

"He knows this place" Robin supplied in much calmer tones than Thomas.

"_Er ist hier gewesen_!"

"He's been here."

Sally and Rose shared another look, this one filled equally with shock, trepidation and doubt. "That.." Sally brooked, looking between the ebullient Thomas and Doctor Hall's much more sedate, relaxed figure. He was having another little sip from his cup as she spoke. "I do hope you aren't serious."

"Well.." Robin mused, regarding the three as Thomas, his tale complete, crouched on his haunches beside an unease-paled Rose - his cloak-sheet billowing with the movement. Holding the young man's hopeful gaze a moment he said, "We are the largest camp in the vicinity, so if he was travelling in these parts he likely would have at least passed through at some point."

"So.." Rose brooked, uncertain, "he's..an actual person, this Hessian Reiter?

The doctor was thoughtful. "Honestly, I couldn't say. Rumours circulate easily amid bored soldiers, but I have to say that Thomas' story is based on one of the more persistent ones. You can't go three days in these parts without hearing about The Horseman if you're really listening out for mentions of him. He's something of a macabre folk hero to the Hessians here. Some, like Thomas here, think he's flesh and blood, while others think the deeds attributed to him have been done by many people and just..stuck onto a conveniently frightening mantle for the war. One thing is certain though. The stories of those deeds keep coming. I've heard more than one Hessian captain returning from an incursion with word of Der Reiter's presence. Most though speak only of the feel of him. Of some oppressive thing. Their favourite description at present is, 'Der Geschmack von Blut auf der Luft auf eine kalte Nacht.'.."

Thomas perked up in recognition, beaming an excited, "_Ja_ mein herr!" as he gently, kind-naturedly, wormed Rose's cup from her fingers and pilfered a sip.

Too caught up with listening to Robin to much care about the theft, Rose asked, "What's that?", apprehension making the question softer than she'd intended it to be. At the doctor's reply, "The taste of blood on the air on a cold night" she felt herself pale a hint more than she had already.

"And this fellow.." Sally brooked then, leaning her shoulder to Rose's companionably as she sensed her discomfort, "..he's said to have been _here_?"

"Hearsay again" Doctor Hall replied. "As I said, if he is a real person who has the role the men here have cast him in - the great Hessian scourge of the enemy - it would be remiss of him not to at least know of this place. There are those here who'd put gold to having either seen him pasturing his horse in the fields, stealing a drink from one of the troughs on his way through or simply lurking quietly in the shadows, watchful but always silent and unreachable. They speak of him as if he's a ghost at times - seeing him from the corner of the eye only to turn and find him gone - and that, amongst other things, makes me wonder whether he is anything more than tales."

Rose spoke up next, equal parts off-put by the idea of shadowy ghost men lurking in the night and wanting of information that would help dispel her fears."Oh?"

"As news of his exploits, or supposed exploits, gets back here" Robin explained, his words careful, considered, and geared towards reassuring his charges as best he could, "the sightings redouble. Its as if he's conjured from the air when the men want to see him; his presence imagined by the curious, the nervous, and the war-hungry." He paused a moment, shaking his head. "Were he really in the area and actively visiting this place as often as they suggest though, he wouldn't only be glimpsed in the shadows from an eye's corner. He'd be seen strolling along the road going about his day like everyone else. This isn't a place where he'd have to hide away. This is friendly territory."

Those facts, it turned out, were of small comfort to Sally and Rose. Neither woman for the rest of the evening could stop herself from giving every shadowed area a second look, particularly after they and Thomas parted company and went about their respective eves separated from their cosy little group. Luckily for them though, there was no presence about that tasted like blood on a cold night; no figures in the shadows or eyes looking back when they stared into those shadows to make sure they were indeed alone.

Stillness reigned, and it soothed them.

..

..

Far beyond the triage's walls however..far beyond Sally and Rose and the false veil of safety the establishment and its residents portrayed on the edge of a war zone..there was movement. A regal equine head, black as the gathering night, rose from and was silhouetted against the half-mile of rolling wheat fields by the setting sun.

* * *

Translations:

"Ich spreche nur ein bisschen Englisch, Schwester" I only speak a little English, Sister.

"Bin ich richtig?" Am I right?

"Und am besten von allen!" And best of all!


End file.
